WHARTON (Family). The Whartons of Wharton were an old north of England family, and in 1543 Thomas Wharton (1495–1568) was created a baron for his services in border warfare. From him descended the 2nd, 3rd and 4th barons; and the latter, Philip Wharton (1613–1696), was the father of Thomas Wharton (1648–1715), who in 1706 was created earl and in 1714 marquess of Wharton. The 1st marquess was ono of the chief Whig politicians after the Revolution. He is famous in literary history as the author of the famous political ballad, Lilliburlero, which “sang James II. out of three kingdoms.” Wharton was lord-lieutenant of Ireland in Anne's reign, and incurred the wrath of Swift, who attacked him as Verres in the Examiner (No. 14), and drew a separate “character” of him, which is one of Swift's masterpieces. He was a man of great wit and versatile cleverness, and cynically ostentatious in his immorality, having the reputation of being the greatest rake and the truest Whig of his time. Addison dedicated to him the fifth volume of the Spectator, giving him a very different "character" from Swift's. His first wife, Anna Wharton (1632–1685), was an authoress, whose poems, including an Elegy on Lord Rochester, were celebrated by Walter and Dryden. His son, Philip Wharton (1698–1731), duke of Wharton, succeeded to his father's marques sate and fortune, and in 1718 was created a duke. But he quickly earned for himself, by his wild and profligate frolics and reckless playing at politics, Pope’s satire of him as “the scorn and wonder of our days” (Moral Essays, i. 179). He spent his large estates in a few years, then went abroad and gave eccentric support to the Old Pretender. There is a lively picture of his appearance at Madrid in 1726 in a letter from the British consul, quoted in Stanhope’s History of England (ii. 140). He was outlawed in 1729, and at his death the titles became extinct. In 1843 a claim was made before the House of Lords for a revival of the barony in favour of Mr Kemys-Tynte, a descendant of the 1st baron in the female line.
For the history of the family see E. R . Wharton’s Whartons of Wharton Hall (1898).
WHARTON, FRANCIS (1820–1889), American legal writer and educationalist, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the 7th of March 1820. He graduated at Yale in 1839, was admitted to the bar in 1843, became prominent in Pennsylvania politics as a Democrat, and in Philadelphia edited the North A merican and United States Gazette. He was professor of English history and literature at Kenyon College, Gambler, Ohio, in 1856–1863. He took orders in the Protestant Episcopal church in 1862 and in 1863–1869 was rector of St Paul's Church, Brookline, Massachusetts. In 1871–1881 he taught ecclesiastical polity and canon law in the Protestant Episcopal Theological School at Cambridge, Massachusetts, and at this time he lectured on the conflict of laws at Boston University. For two years he travelled in Europe, and after two years in Philadelphia he went to Washington, D.C., where he was lecturer on criminal law (1885–1886) and then professor of criminal law (1886–1888) at Columbian (now George Washington) University; in 1885–1888 he was solicitor (or examiner of claims) of the Department of State, and from 1888 to his death on the 21st of February 1889 was employed on an edition (authorized by Congress) of the Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States (6 vols., 1889, ed. by J. B Moore), which superseded Sparks’s compilation. Wharton was a “broad churchman” and was deeply interested in the hymnology of his church. He received the degree of LL.D. from the university of Edinburgh in 1883, and was the foremost American authority on international law.
He published: A Treatise on the Criminal Law of the United States (1846; many times reprinted); State Trials of the Untied States during the Administrations of Washington and Adams (1849); A Treatise on the Law of Homicide in the United States (1855); with Moreton Stille, A Treatise on Medical Jurisprudence (1855); Modern Theism (1859). in which he applied rules of legal evidence to modern sceptical theories; A Treatise on the Conflict of Laws (1872; 3rd ed 1903); A Treatise on the Law of Negligence (1874); A Commentary on the Law of Agency and Agents (1876), A Commentary on the Law of Evidence in Civil Issues (1877; 3rd ed. 1888); a companion work on Criminal Evidence; Commentary on the Law of Contracts (1882); Commentaries on Law (1884); and a Digest of the International Law of the United States (3 vols. 1886).
See the Memoir (Philadelphia, 1891) by his daughter, Mrs Viele, and several friends; and J. B. Moore's “Brief Sketch of the Life of Francis Wharton,” prefaced to the first volume of the Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence.
WHARTON, HENRY (1664–1695), English
writer,
was
descended from Thomas, and Baron Wharton (1520–1572),
being a son of the Rev. Edmund Wharton, vicar of Worstead,
Norfolk. Born at Worstead on the 9th of November 1664,
Wharton was educated by his father, and then at Gonville and
Caius College, Cambridge. Both his industry and his talents
were exceptional, and his university career was brilliant. In
1686 he entered the service of the ecclesiastical historian, the
Rev. William Cave (1637–1713), whom he helped in his literary
work; but considering that his assistance was not sufficiently
appreciated he soon forsook this employment. In 1687 he was
ordained deacon, and in 1688 he made the acquaintance of the
archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft, under whose
generous patronage some of his literary work w^as done. The archbishop,
who had a very high opinion of Wharton's character and
talents, made him one of his chaplains, and presented him to the
Kentish living of Sundridge, and afterwards to that of Chartham
in the same county. In 1689 he took the oath of allegiance to
William and Mary, but he wrote a severe criticism of Bishop
Burnet's History of the Reformation, and it was partly owing to
the bishop's hostility that he did not obtain further preferment
in the English church. He died on the 5th of March 1695, and
was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Wharton's most valuable work is his Anglia sacra, a collection of the lives of English archbishops and bishops, which was published in two volumes in 1691. Some of these were written by Wharton himself; others were borrowed from early writers. His other writings include, in addition to his criticism of the History of the Reformation, A treatise of the celibacy of the clergy (1688); The enthusiasm of the Church of Rome demonstrated in some observations upon the life of Ignatius Loyola (1688); and A defence of pluralities (1692, new ed. 1703). In the Lambeth Library there are sixteen volumes of Wharton's manuscripts. Describing him as “this wonderful man,” Stubbs says that Wharton did for the elucidation of English Church history " more than any one before or since." A life of Wharton is included in George D’Oyly's Life of W. Sancroft (1821).
WHATELY, RICHARD (1787–1863), English logician and theological writer, archbishop of Dublin, was born in London on the 1st of February 1787. He was educated at a private school near Bristol, and at Oriel College, Oxford. He obtained double second-class honours and the prize for the English essay; in 1811 he was elected fellow of Oriel, and in 1814 took orders. During his residence at Oxford he wrote his celebrated tract, Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Bonaparte, a very clever jeu d'esprit directed against excessive scepticism as applied to the Gospel history. After his marriage in 1821 he settled in Oxford, and in 1822 was appointed Bampton lecturer. The lectures, On the Use and Abuse of Party Spirit in Matters of Religion, were published in the same year. In August 1823 he removed to Halesworth in Suffolk, but in 1825, having been appointed principal of St Alban Hall, he returned to Oxford. At St Alban Hall Whately found much to reform, and he left it a different place. In 1825 he published a series of Essays on Some of the Peculiarities of the Christian Religion, followed in 1828 by a second series On some of the Difficulties in the Writings of St Paul, and in 1830 by a third On the Errors of Romanism traced to their Origin in Human Nature. While he was at St Alban Hall (1826) the work appeared which is perhaps most closely associated with his name—his treatise on Logic, originally contributed to the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, in which he raised the study of the subject to a new level. It gave a great impetus to the study of logic throughout Great Britain. A similar treatise on Rhetoric, also contributed to the Encyclopaedia, appeared in 1828. In 1829 Whately was elected to the professorship of political economy at Oxford in succession to Nassau William Senior.
This was a subject admirably suited to his lucid, practical intellect, but his tenure of office was cut short by his appointment to the archbishopric of Dublin in 1831. He published only one course of Introductory Lectures (1831), but one of his first acts on going to Dublin was to endow a chair of political economy in Trinity College out of his private purse. Whately's appointment by Lord Grey to the see of Dublin came as a great surprise to everybody, for though a decided Liberal Whately had from the beginning stood aloof from all political parties, and ecclesiastically his position was that of